


Call Them Brothers

by cuckleberrywish



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drabbles, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-09 23:03:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 8,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3267641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuckleberrywish/pseuds/cuckleberrywish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life on the TARDIS. Ficlets pre and post-JE and everything in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby fic based on a tumblr prompt. My first and probably my only as I'm not big on Doctor/Donna having kids.

Donna Noble thinks she is more relaxed than she’s ever been.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the sky is loveliest cerulean blue, dotted with whispy summertime clouds. On a beautiful day like this it’s hard to imagine waging endless war against the universe as they do, but then their fight has paused for now, for a while, and all because of _him_. 

He’s nearly four, all cherubic freckled cheeks, ginger curls, and the most soulful dark eyes she’s ever seen. Except for his father’s, of course. He has precisely his father’s eyes. 

 

Sometimes he looks at her with those too-wise eyes and she sees the universe and time and space reflected and it scares her. 

Now though, he’s giggling like mad, swinging from his father’s arm just like any toddler (half Time Lord or otherwise) should do. Donna is watching them from where she’s sprawled out on the picnic blanket with one eye cracked and a lazy smile. Her boys have a penchant for trouble that can’t be avoided. Constant vigilance is a must. 

And then as if the universe has heard her thoughts, there’s a thump, and cries split the air. 

Donna is up like a rocket.

“Sweetheart, what’s happened?” she coos as Jack wraps his chubby little arms tightly around her neck and buries his face in her hair.

“Daddy dropped me.”

Donna looks up from her son’s embrace and glares at the Doctor who is rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly and pointedly avoiding her gaze. 

“Daddy did, did he?” she says sharply in the Doctor’s direction.

“Well, he’s a very slippery little fellow, isn’t he, he just slid out of my hands, couldn’t be avoided really, he was swinging in sort of an intense way and I suppose I just couldn’t quite keep a grip on him…” 

Donna tries hard to look cross with him as he rambles. She turns back to her son.

“Where does it hurt, love?” 

Jack points at his elbow, giving a pout worthy of the Oncoming Storm himself. 

She presses a kiss to his arm. 

“Hmm… looks okay to me. All better?”

Jack nods and pulls his sleeve down, still gazing at the Doctor with doleful eyes. 

“And daddy promises to be more careful when you play aeroplane, right daddy?”

“Wha—oh yes! Of course! Yes!” 

Donna finally caves and smiles properly, ruffling Jack’s hair fondly and pressing a kiss to the Doctor’s cheek.

“You boys play nice, then, I’m taking a nap.” 

She’s lying, of course. She wouldn’t leave her silly time boys alone for one second.


	2. Chapter 2

Somewhere in the background, the Doctor was speaking.

This wasn’t a particularly unusual occurrence; the Doctor seem to believe that without exception, quiet moments ought to be filled with inane babble. Donna had gotten used to tuning him out as she picked idly at her nails, brushed the lint off her skirt, or did some other menial task that was still considerably more engaging than the Doctor’s constant chatter.

He was pacing back and forth now, his sonic screwdriver alight, still muttering wildly to himself and perhaps her as well, though she certainly wasn’t listening.

Per usual, they’d been arrested and chucked in some godforsaken prison on some equally godforsaken planet, though at least in this one their captors had the courtesy to supply a solitary chair for their supposed two week stay. And of course the door was deadlock sealed.

He’d seemed to reach some sort of a conclusion now, because he was standing in front of her with his arms outstretched, looking a bit too much like a puppy desperate for approval than was perhaps prudent for a 900 year old Time Lord. 

“…so we’ll just invert the plasma conduit and re-route the delta regions and voila! We’re free!”

He put his screwdriver back in his pocket with an appropriate flourish, looking at her expectantly after what she assumed was a particularly impressive, impenetrable, and lengthy bout of technobabble.

She smiled wryly at him.

“Well, aren’t you clever.”

He smirked a little.

“I absolutely am.”

“Modest too.”

He gave a sort of self-satisfied shrug that made her want to smack him and hug him in equal measures.

“There might be an easier way though.”

With that same coy half-grin on her face, she withdrew a small gold key from between her breasts.

His jaw dropped.

“Where’d you get that?!”

“Nicked it off the guard when he was distracted.”

“He didn’t notice?”

“He was distracted because I kneed him in the groin.”

The Doctor let out a shout of laughter, his eyes glinting with affection.

“That’s my girl.”

He let the bizarre little contraption he’d been fashioning out of half a paper clip, a banana peel and three screws fall to the ground with a pathetic splat and then they were off again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obviously post JE.

He always comes when she calls.

This time is no different, and as she falls with fire swirling in her eyes, he sheds a tear at the spark of recognition behind the flames.

“Please no,” she begs.

She always begs, and it always breaks his hearts.

He thinks one day she’ll wear him down, he’ll let her burn in his arms, too weak to shield his best friend from her own mind.

But without his permission, his hands move to rest on her temples like so many times before. Her mind is familiar to him now, sweeping emerald shot through with his own crackling tendrils of gold.

He takes a moment before he acts to smooth his palm across her lovely sweaty cheek, to bask in the glow of her recognition even as it is tempered with fear.

“Please,” she whimpers again, her face screwed up with pain.

And then, he thinks, he’s failed her, because he knows he could never strip himself away from her, not when she’s trembling and crying and begging him not to. Tonight will be the night Donna Noble burns.

But his traitorous hands are still alight on her temples and in an instant she’s plunged into darkness.

Maybe next time, he thinks, next time he’ll have the strength.

But as he grasps her unconscious form to him, he knows.

He can never let her go.


	4. All Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Library angsty-angst angst because I always feel like what Donna goes through in the Library is sort of glossed over and I think losing your family throws you for a loop even if they’re imaginary. Hurt/comfort.

After the Library, the Doctor knew he was losing her.

He tried to distract her with the wonders of the universe, but her eyes were dull and brittle and he could tell she was broken.

Occasionally he’d catch her, staring off into space with tragedy etched into every line of her being. She’d notice him watching and give herself a little shake.

“Are you happy?” he’d asked her one day, as they sat silently over tea and biscuits.

She was quiet for a while, toying with the biscuit in her hands and refusing to meet his gaze.

“Of course I am, Spaceman,” she’d said, but her voice and her eyes betrayed her. 

Occasionally, unexpectedly, she’d open up for a moment. She’d say something offhandedly, something about her daughter’s favorite food, or a color that reminded her of her son’s eyes, and then she’d add quietly that of course they didn’t exist and of course that was nonsense. Then she’d retreat to her room ignoring the Doctor’s pleas for her to stay and talk to him, but not before he could see the tears. He respected her too much to follow her. He knew she didn’t want him to see her waver.

He didn’t say anything when she cried out in her sleep. He just wrapped himself around her and told himself he would be able to heal her, that he could take the place of the family that wasn’t.

Once, she’d murmured Lee’s name into his chest and gathered him closer, and suddenly he found he couldn’t stop crying. 

And the Doctor, for all his skill at fixing the universe, couldn’t fix his best friend.

One night she’d retreated to her bathroom and he couldn’t take the ringing silence any longer. He followed her.

She’d crumpled to the shower floor beneath a scalding hot spray that left angry red splotches on her creamy skin. Her back was shaking, her knees curled up to her chin as she sobbed. She was soaked, hair clinging to her back in fiery tendrils that clashed brilliantly with her flushed skin. She was clutching something in her hands, something he couldn’t see, and her knuckles were nearly white.

She’d seen him, and her face had contorted with rage.

Even as she begged him to leave her, as she pounded at his back with her fists and let loose wordless shrieks of anguish and frustration, he comforted her. She writhed in his arms, calling him names and choking on sobs as he wordlessly carried her to her bed and set her down, sitting next to her and pulling the duvet over both of them.

He wrapped his arms around her and she visibly wilted.

It was only then he could see what she’d been holding; a shoe, a child’s shoe, soaked now.

“It’s silly,” she whispered into his chest.

“Of course it’s not,” he’d said, and then she’d fisted her hands in his jacket and sobbed. He stroked light circles on the smooth skin of her back, and murmured soothingly, holding her close. He resolved then and there never again to leave her alone to her grief for fear of upsetting her dignity.

Eventually, her crying abated to watery sniffling, and she turned her gaze toward him. There was such warmth blazing in her eyes, piercing through the sadness and he smiled, cupping her cheek gently.

“I’m not all right,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth to say something, pain flickering in his eyes, and she silenced him with an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

“I’m not all right, but I’m ready to be.”

The Doctor gave her a small smile and settled deeper into the blankets as her eyelashes fluttered shut. She would be all right, properly all right not ‘Time Lord’ all right. He’d make sure of it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place sometime during season 4.

Donna is in a terrible snit.

It has nothing to do with the little heart-shaped window decorations or the sickly sweet 20-something couples, huddled together over their frothy, steaming beverages. It has nothing to do with the little cupid, hung up in the corner with a jauntily strung bow, that seems to be taunting her with its innocent, cherubic eyes.

No. It’s not at all to do with any of that.

It’s the fact that her stupid not-Martian landed them on Earth to do some “vital repairs” (like she hadn’t heard that one before) and had abandoned her completely in this hellish, couple-ridden cafe to wait it out.

“It’s the 14th of February,” Donna had said, upon spying the first glimpse of pink and red streamers strung from a shop window out the door of the TARDIS.

“Mmm,” the Doctor mutters articulately.

“It’s the _14th of February,_ ” Donna reiterates, planting her hands on her hips and bobbing her eyebrows emphatically.

“So it is,” he murmurs, still distracted with aforementioned “vital repairs.”

“Considering I hate Christmas how the hell do you think I feel about bloody _Valentine’s Day_?!” she bellows in his ear, and it was enough to make him straighten abruptly, with a pathetic little yelp at the sudden volume.

“Ah…. yes. Right… er… Valentine. Lovely fellow, bit keen on marrying me, but who _isn’t_ if I’m honest–”

“I don’t care what a _nice fellow_ he was,” Donna growls and the Doctor, correctly reading her murderous expression, shuts up quickly.

“I take it you _don’t_ like Valentine’s Day?” he ventures.

“36 years of terrible Valentine’s Days will have that effect,” she mutters, scowling.

“Well we’ll be off in a mo’, just run along and I’ll come get you as soon as I’m finished.”

And so that’s how she ends up _here._ An attractive young couple starts kissing over their table and she nearly throws her hot coffee on them.

But it’s not their fault they’re all _young_ and _in love. ‘It’s all downhill from there!’_ Donna wants to shout at them, but the only thing worse than being alone, on Valentine’s Day, surrounded by couples is being a bitter shrieking harpy alone, on Valentine’s Day, and surrounded by couples.

So Donna resigns herself to grumpy silence and reminds herself firmly that it’s not the Valentine’s Day aspect of things that accounts for her mood after all, but the fact that the Doctor has abandoned her. That’s all. And it’s been exactly two hours.

She’s saved from her litany of dark thoughts by the Doctor, who appears beside her so suddenly she jumps and spills a bit of her coffee on herself. Just _perfect._

“Ready to go?”

Donna sighs, mops up her drink as best she can and nods.

“I thought we’d stop off for dinner at this place I know. If you like,” the Doctor offers as he ushers her out of the cafe.

When they arrive at the (surprisingly posh) restaurant, Donna realizes with a start that he’s made reservations. Proper reservations. No psychic paper in sight. Donna studies him out the corner of her eye.

“Is this a date?” she asks him suspiciously, as the maître d’ seats them.

“No,” says the Doctor flatly. Then he pulls out her chair so she can sit in it.

“This better not be a date.”

“It’s _not_ a date.”

“Seems like a date. Valentine’s Day. Candles. Cloth napkins. Reservations. No aliens.”

“Donna, I know better than to try to _date_ you. I just thought it would be fun to have a nice meal while we’re here.”

She’s saved unpacking that little remark by the waiter. And so they pass a thoroughly pleasant evening together at a lovely restaurant with divine food and excellent wine. But it’s not a date. Of course it’s not.

Afterwards, arm-in-arm, they stroll along the high street back toward the TARDIS, and Donna feels the last of her Valentine’s-Day-induced cynicism leaking away beneath the yellowy light of the street lamps.

“Did you plan this?” she asks suddenly, the thought striking her out of nowhere.

“Hmm?”

“You know. Landing on Valentine’s Day. The restaurant. The ‘TARDIS repairs’.”

He shrugs and gives her an enigmatic little smile that makes her grin in kind.

“Because you’d made reservations,” she points out. “Proper reservations like a real human-type… person.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while, the same crooked smirk tugging at his lips.

“I really _did_ have to do TARDIS repairs,” is all he responds and she feels warmth flood through her despite the damp, chilly night.

He presents her with a box of chocolates and she tries to sound cross about it but ends up flinging her arms around him anyway.

* * *

 

Much later, they sit side by side, dangling their feet out the TARDIS door and into space. She’s clad in a dressing gown and flannel pajamas, her fuzzy slippers dangling precariously off her feet.

“What if I lose a slipper?” Donna asks through a mouthful of truffle. The Doctor snorts.

“Then we’ll get you another one.”

“I wonder if they sell singular slippers,” she muses. "Only, I reckon I've never seen just one in M&S..." He smiles to himself and listens to her chatter, about slippers and space and other things. She bats his hand away when he tries to steal a caramel-filled chocolate without pausing for a breath and he laughs.

“What?” she asks.

“Oh just… nothing.”

She shakes her head like he’s completely insane, her eyes fond and quiets for a moment, gazing out into the star-strewn abyss beyond the sturdy blue doorway of the TARDIS.

“This hasn’t been so bad,” she murmurs. “As Valentine’s Day goes.”

He smiles warmly and takes her hand and she drops her head on his shoulder, sighing happily.

“I want you to have good memories,” he says, because he can’t quite articulate what he wants to say, that he wants to rid of her of every negative experience she’s ever had because the people in her life don’t value her or at least make them such faint memories that all she’ll have now is joy. Her lips quirk and he feels her thumb smooth across the back of his hand and he thinks she understands.

“I’m working on it, Spaceman.”

He smiles crookedly at her and steals another chocolate (raspberry) from beneath their clasped hands. It hasn’t been such a bad Valentine’s Day for him either.


	6. Chapter 6

Donna was sure the TARDIS was malfunctioning.

Upon waking, it’s normally soothing hum seemed to resemble something more akin to a drum line reverberating throughout her head. While the TARDIS certainly did have a peculiar sense of humor, it was usually nothing quite so nausea-inducing. 

Curious, Donna cracked open her eyes and immediately clamped them shut again. A bad idea. Possibly her worst ever. 

And then the events of the previous night came flooding back and she groaned: A “girls’ night,” a proper night with her friends sans the Doctor. It had seemed like such a good plan at the time. 

 It was a little while before Donna was able to control the churning of her stomach enough to venture out into the blinding brightness of the TARDIS corridor. She couldn’t help but feel that the TARDIS was punishing her for her uncouth behavior.

“You win,” she muttered aloud to the empty space. “I’m never drinking again.” 

The TARDIS emitted a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter and Donna’s grimace deepened. 

With a heavy sigh, she sidled into the kitchen where the Doctor was making tea and humming absently to himself. He looked up at her arrival.

“How are we– ah– today?”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable, like he didn’t quite want to meet her gaze. 

Donna grunted and plopped down in a chair. 

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Figured as much. Tea.” 

He bustled around, still looking slightly awkward and _was he blushing?_

“Doctor…” Donna began. 

“Hmm?” he murmured, still distracted.

“I didn’t… do anything… y’know… untoward last night when I got home… did I?” 

The tips of his ears went scarlet.

“Not as such, no, not when you… er… got home, per say….” he said carefully, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. 

Donna moaned loudly and buried her head in her arms. 

“What is it, Spaceman?” she asked, voice muffled by her thick robe. 

“You er… you may have… contacted me…”

“Did I drunk dial you?”

“Well… not…. not exactly.”

Face properly flaming now, the Doctor produced his mobile phone from his trouser pocket and cautiously put it on the table, prodding it in Donna’s direction. 

Donna finally lifted her head from the table top to look at the display on the mobile and promptly choked on the sip of tea she’d just taken. 

“Are those–”

“They do seem to be, yes.” 

Displayed prominently on the Doctor’s mobile were her own breasts. 

Donna made a strangled sound in her throat somewhere between a whimper and a groan and snatched the mobile from the table top, squinting as she appraised the photo. 

“Bloody hell,” she muttered finally, turning scarlet, and burying her face in her hands. 

The Doctor walked around the table and hurriedly slid into the chair next to her, putting an arm around her.  

“Donna no, er, don’t feel bad, it’s really okay, no harm done, don’t worry it’s not like they’re not nice, they’re magnificent really–”

Was the idiot really _comforting_ her?

Donna picked up her head and almost laughed at his completely earnest expression. 

“You think I’m upset because I think _you don’t like them_?”

The Doctor’s eyes widened, his mouth opening and closing uselessly and Donna fought back the impulse to giggle. The answer, of course, was a resounding yes, but somehow his planet-sized brain seemed to be having trouble producing the words. 

“Thought you’d give me a little pick me up, a little burst of confidence?”

He looked panicked, and she knew he was rapidly reconsidering the comforting arm he’d slung across her shoulder. Now he looked more like he wanted to disappear into the floor completely. 

Without a word, Donna snatched the mobile from the table and stalked out of the kitchen. He scurried after her, still sputtering. 

He caught up to her as she was flinging it out the TARDIS door and into the vortex.

“B-but… but that was my mobile!”

She turned to him, her gaze thunderous. 

“I’ll buy you another one.”

He opened his mouth to protest and she silenced him with another sharp glare.

“Not another word, Spaceman.”

He thought it best to comply. 


	7. Chapter 7

He decides she’s the most lovely like this.

He’d never tell her, of course. She’d call him a tosser and bluster through her embarrassment. He loves that about her.

But her eyes are gleaming and her chestnut hair is whipping around and he can tell she’s just a bit frightened by the way her teeth chatter as the wind tugs at them. But she looks elated. Joyful. Utterly ecstatic.

He’s a few paces behind her, watching as she carefully scales the last precipice and then looks down into the valley below. Her face is filled with wonder and she momentarily seems to have forgotten about him, scanning the dusky horizon and the vast landscape laid out miles beneath them.

But then as he catches up with her, she turns to him and laces her fingers through his, leaning into his shoulder.

“We’re on top of the world,” she breathes, gazing once again at the broad swathe of night sky around them.

He couldn’t agree more, but privately he thinks it has very little to do with the mountain they’re standing on.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little goofy ficlet because I still haven't seen any Star Wars.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The Doctor smooths his carefully coiffed earmuff buns that sit perched, denting his space hair and obscuring his ears almost entirely, and looks deeply affronted. “What?”

“You are _not_ wearing that.”

The Doctor looks down, appraising his apparel which is comprised of a floor-length white robe, belted sassily round his hips with a dark cord. “Why not?”

“You’re wearing a bloody dress.”

“Honestly, you 21st century humans with your narrow ideas of gender–”

“A bloody dress and _earmuffs_!” she cries, apparently having just spotted the rounds of hair he’d crafted out of what did indeed appear to be a pair of old earmuffs.

“She’s my favorite character!”

“Why couldn’t you have dressed up as Spock or something?”

“Because that’s something completely different!” he exclaims.

“They’ve both got space in them, haven’t they?”

“They have,” he concedes.

“And aliens?”

“Yes, but–”

“And a dashing tale of intergalactic romance?”

“I s’pose you could say that–”

“Then how are they different?!”

The Doctor sniffs condescendingly and doesn’t even bother justifying that question with a response. She glares at him and he glares at her and for a little while tense silence thickens in the console room.

Then he says, “So I take it you _aren’t_ wearing a costume?” And she makes a half-strangled sound in the back of her throat, turns around, and prepares to storm right out the TARDIS doors, but not before she sees the Doctor quickly shoving a bit of crumpled fabric out of sight.

And then she realises he looks disappointed. Far too much like a kid who's just been told Christmas has been cancelled for her taste. 

Of course she can’t have that.

With another guttural groan, she snatches the Han Solo costume he’d been hiding out of his hands and stomps off down the corridor.

She just _knew_ she’d regret agreeing to go the Star Wars premiere with him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt.

It’s still all very new this _thing_ between them, whatever it is.

New enough that she still shimmies under the duvet, her cheeks colouring vividly when he peels her blouse off and then afterward she hops around, ungainly with a sheet clenched under her armpits, while she searches for her errant clothing where it’s been scattered about on her bedroom floor.

New enough that the feel of his calloused fingers against her spine is enough to tighten her chest and every time he touches her electricity ricochets up and down her body and then settles lazily at the pit of her stomach.

New enough that she worries what he thinks of the gingery stubble between her legs even though she’d never admit to herself that she cares about that sort of thing or moreover that she cares if _he_ cares about that sort of thing.

She repeats _friends with benefits_ like a mantra, like a shield that keeps her from scrutinising his judgement too closely because they’re just friends so who cares what he thinks about her body anyway?

(It’s a lie, of course. She suspects she’ll always care deeply about what he thinks of her.)

So when she’s having a shower, and mid-shampoo his shaggy brown head of hair appears through the curtain her first impulse is to hide. And not for the first time.

But before she can act on any such urge, his entire lanky body has somehow slithered in beside her without so much as wrinkling the curtain and he’s got her pressed back against the wall, the tiles cool and slick against her back. He sucks at her pulse point, kisses the soft skin between her breasts, mouths at her pouting stomach, nips at the rounds of her hips.

And then, he settles on his target and – _oh god_ – it’s all she can do to keep upright, her knees buckling uselessly, her hands reflexively gripping fistfuls of his thick hair, fingers scrabbling at the rubber strap round his head…

Wait– _what_?

Distracted momentarily from the blinding white pleasure rapidly exploding behind her eyelids, Donna feels around the back of the Doctor’s skull, and indeed, there’s what appears to be a rubber band stretched around the circumference. He seems to notice her the cadence of her fingers in his hair has changed and he halts, just _there._

Now thoroughly bemused, Donna grabs a handful of hair and yanks upward.

“Oi– ow, hang on– what are you doing?!” the Doctor splutters, as he tries to peel her grip from his hair and springs upward at the same time. “I was _busy_!”

And then Donna bursts out laughing.

Because he’s wearing _swimming_   _goggles_. Banana-patterned swimming goggles, at that.

“What the _hell–_ ” she heaves, nearly doubled over with laughter, “–are you wearing?!”

He looks a little bit disgruntled and more than a little bit confused, so she helpfully snaps the elastic band, and he winces, rubbing the back of his head.

“Just trying to be practical,” he shrugs, giving her a wicked little grin.

Donna can’t respond because every time she straightens up to look at him she starts laughing all over again. She simply cannot believe she is naked, in the shower, with her best friend, and he’s wearing bloody _goggles_. It’s too much for her to take.

It takes her about 10 seconds to realise the Doctor has been talking for a while.

“...and I s’pose I just figured I should protect my eyes, given the amount of time I spend under the spray and given the acidity of standard 21st century earth shampoo and the pH of the vertebrate eyeball, although strictly speaking it’s not standard  – have you heard of Ringorns, Donna? Their eyes are very acidic! All of their mucus membranes are, just a bit of a dab and you’ve gone all sort of… melty. Brilliant, but it does give new meaning to the phrase _if looks could kill_ doesn’t it?  Remind me never to bring you there  – but anyhow, the reasoning behind the goggles is really quite sound...”

She listens to him for a while, spouting nonsense while the water beats down over both of them and then she decides enough is enough and she kisses him instead.

He responds enthusiastically, his hands settling low on her back. When they break apart she can’t help snorting again. He looks like a wet rat. A wet rat wearing swim goggles with bananas on.

“So the goggles can stay?” he asks slyly, giving her bum a squeeze.

She smiles sweetly at him. And sprays him directly in the face.

As he stands there, grinning widely in his idiotic goggles and looking exactly like a sopping wet sheepdog that's recently had its body completely shaved, Donna smiles to herself and thinks that in his own daft way, the Doctor always knows just the thing to keep her from feeling self-conscious. And she wouldn't have him any other way. 


	10. Chapter 10

Donna Noble has done a lot of mad things of late.

She’d briefly impersonated a goddess on Sphon (that had ended poorly); she’d had a bonafide sword fight with a disgruntled knight in 14th century Yorkshire (that had ended, if possible, even more poorly); she’d swung on a vine deep in the Brazilian rainforest, and dethroned a despot who threatened centuries-long peace in the Plexor star system and had even perfected a guilt-free apple tart recipe.

But this... _this_ is by far the maddest thing she’s done adventuring with the Doctor.

She voices this opinion aloud but she’s pretty sure her words are lost in the din, the wail of the air-raid sirens and the shouts bouncing off the walls of the corridor just beyond the door.

Because while all hell breaks loose outside, Donna… well, Donna’s having a bit of a snog.

It’s always been a latent fantasy of hers, to shag a soldier. Something about the uniform. She doesn’t want to think too hard about it and it seems he doesn’t either, as he drags her blouse off her shoulders, pressing urgent, open-mouthed kisses to the tops of her breasts. She rakes her hands through his close-cropped hair and tries not to think about how very wrong this is, how the Doctor would kill her if he knew, and how that thought fans the little flame of arousal in her stomach all the more. She finds she enjoys provoking that hot possessive streak in the Doctor. And then she shudders and promptly adds that notion to the pile of things she’s trying not to think about.  

Sam – because that’s his name, her soldier, the man who’d kissed her as she sat next to him what seems hours ago, and had looked at her like she was worth saving – makes it easy to forget. Almost before she knows it, he’s laid her back on his narrow bunk, and he’s smoothing his hands down her ribs and she forgets the Doctor completely, forgets that they’re in the middle of _bloody World War II._

And then an air-raid siren goes off.

“Fucking hell,” Donna mutters, shaking him off of her. If he’s shocked at her language, he doesn’t let on. He just rocks back on his heels, regards her for a long moment, and begins re-buttoning his shirt.

She’s hardly managed to start pulling her blouse back on before he’s completely dressed all over again, looking a little rumpled but no worse for wear. He kisses her, long, and tinged with desperation. And then he disappears out the door.

The Doctor, helpfully, chooses that moment to materialise.

“Donna!” he shouts. And rushes in the room, already reaching for her hand. “Donna we’ve got to go! We’ve got to– _what the hell_?”

He’s grabbed her hand and yanked her up and in the process her not-quite-properly-buttoned blouse has fallen nearly all the way open and now he’s staring, a little dazed, at the sliver of marble skin revealed by the gaping plackets. She follows his gaze and glares at him soundly, attacking the remaining buttons one-handed.

“Oh nevermind that, let’s go!” she shouts and yanks him out of the room before he can become any more fascinated by her state of undress. Honestly, for a bloke who ostensibly has the sort of intellect about which great novels are written – of which he’d shown her three and then preened visibly until she’d threatened to hit him with the heaviest one – he is distractible as hell.

Fortunately he doesn’t have much time to comment on the whole situation what with the bombs and the aeroplanes and the running for their lives and Donna is, for once, grateful.

Finally, they come skidding to a halt just inside the door of the TARDIS. The Doctor throws the dematerialisation lever and Donna holds tight to a bit of coral while the TARDIS shudders into the vortex.

“Well that was a close one–” she begins.

“So who’s your friend?” the Doctor interrupts, a little too loudly. Donna closes her mouth with a click, opens it, and then closes it again. It’s several moments before she regains the power of speech.

“Sorry?”

“Well I assume you didn’t fancy a wardrobe change mid, y’know, _war,_ so I imagine you had a bloke round, didn’t you?” His tone is still too-casual and he won’t look at her and it sets her teeth on edge.

“So what if I did?” she asks suspiciously.

“Ha!” he says so suddenly she jumps. He spins and points an accusing finger in her face which she promptly smacks away. Undeterred, he brandishes his index finger on the opposite hand and waves it around an inch from her face so that staring at it makes her go cross-eyed.   

“It is none of your business what I got up to and with _whom–_ ” she begins.

“So there _was_ a ‘whom’,” he pronounces with relish and then he abruptly schools his features into an expression of careful disdain. Alas, apparently she’d missed the bit in her How to Be a Companion training when it was stated that it is only okay to _fraternise_ while traveling if you’re 900 years old with stupid hair.  

Well, she’s having none of that.

“His name was Sam,” she says, with a touch of defiance. “And he asked me to go with him.”

“Oh how lovely, you actually know his name. ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she growls.

“I’m just saying, it’s unusual. I’ll be expecting a wedding invitation any day now.”

“You want to be very careful with what you’re saying now, Spaceman,” she enunciates silkily and momentarily he looks a little taken aback. It is her most dangerous and patented do-not-fuck-with-me-so-help-me-god-Spaceman voice and it usually has the intended effect. Nonetheless, the magnificent git mutters something under his breath.

“Something to share with the class?” she tuts impatiently. He glares, straightens up, and walks round the console so that he’s looming over her.

“On second thought, nevermind, I’ll just come to the next one,” he bites out through his teeth.

Donna sees red. And slaps him across the face.

His eyes are wide as he holds a hand to his reddened cheek. “I probably deserved that,” he says quietly.

“I should think so,” Donna mutters indignantly.

The Doctor looks at her for a long moment as if he’s on the cusp of blurting something out, and then grunts something about TARDIS repairs and disappears down the corridor.

 

 _It serves him right,_ she thinks vehemently, watching him putter around the kitchen without meeting her gaze. _He gets off with any starry-eyed space slapper who so much as looks at him, a bit of jealousy would do him good._ And then the kettle whistles and he sets out out her favourite mug and sits opposite her. He busies himself making it just the way she likes and she feels a bit of her vindictive fire extinguished. He finally looks at her and he looks… sad? _Disappointed_?

Suddenly she doesn’t feel triumphant at all. She just feels like somehow she’s let her best friend down. Again.

The silence thickens between them until Donna – who doesn’t well tolerate awkward silences at the best of times – can’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” she begins hesitantly. “It was… foolish of me. I got caught up. In things.”

He gives a noncommittal shrug. “Not a problem. You can do what you like.”

 _Well it clearly is a problem, Sunshine,_ she nearly retorts but the words die on her lips when he finally looks at her. His eyes are huge and brown and sad and – for goodness sake – there’s a reason she avoids his gaze when she wants to be cross with him.

“Would you have gone with him?” the Doctor asks after another beat of pointed silence. He asks nonchalantly enough but his voice wavers almost imperceptibly and he clears his throat and goes back to resolutely studying the contents of his mug. “Y’know… Stan…”

“Sam,” Donna reflexively corrects, and the Doctor’s lips quirk.

“You can you know. Go with someone. I’d be okay.”

It’s so obvious from his tone of voice how very _not okay_ he’d be that she snorts. He looks up sharply at the noise and his lips twitch again.

“Is that what you’re all in a strop about?” she asks as gently as she can.

“I am not _in a strop–_ ”

Donna rolls her eyes.

“Is that what you’re absolutely not in a stropabout?”

He jerks his shoulders. “You’re my best friend,” he says, like it explains everything.

She supposes it does, really. He can’t begrudge her finding someone else because above all he cares for her happiness. But she can tell by the tense set of his shoulders how much it costs him to think about her inevitable departure.

“I’m not leaving you for Sam,” she says, after she decides he’s suffered enough.

“No?”

“No,” she says firmly, and that’s that. And then, because she can’t resist:

“He’s not nearly fit enough. Maybe the next one.” He looks up sharply and she winks. Finally he grins, exhaling heavily through his nose.

“Remind me not to take you to Flexcorn,” he muses. She quirks an eyebrow.

“Planet of the male models.”

“You are _joking._ ”

He grins, his usual, madcap grin that instantly chases away the lingering tension in his eyes.  “Yes. I’m joking.”

“Good,” she says sharply. “Because I’m not ready to leave.”

He takes her hand, smiles wanly. “Me neither.”


	11. Chapter 11

Donna eyes herself in the mirror, smoothing her hands down the elaborate brocade stitched into the front of her dress. In her humble opinion, she’s outdone herself. She’s wearing a gown of deep maroon that contrasts starkly with her pale skin and a corset that in addition to making it thoroughly difficult to draw a full breath, pushes up an indecent amount of cleavage. Frankly, she’s hoping the corset will be the first to go since otherwise she might be unconscious from lack of oxygen before the fun starts.

He’d brought her to a spa planet for two full weeks without tearing too much hair out from boredom or disappearing to start a revolution or any such nonsense and has casually mentioned his latent renaissance fetish on no less than three occasions and so she figures she can throw him a bone. She’s nothing if not a good a friend.

Her hair is loose, cascading down her back in a bright blaze of curls because like hell is she going to spend an hour doing her hair when she already can’t breathe and he’ll just end up tugging it out anyway.

She’s arranging herself demurely on the edge of the bed about to call his name when he bursts into her bedroom anyhow.

“Oh, Donna! I thought - oh - er… _what_?”

Upon seeing her attire he sputters to a halt, his brow furrowing.

“Hi,” Donna greets, lamely. “Uh… ta-da!” She stands and spreads her arms with a slightly anticlimactic flourish which only makes him cock his head sideways like a confused puppy, his frown deepening. It’s not quite the reaction she was hoping for.

“Did you… did you want to go somewhere?” the Doctor asks, seeming genuinely perplexed. “I thought you might want a bit of a lie down before we’re off on the next adventure but if you fancied a trip to Elizabethan England I’d be happy to–”

“I don’t want to go to Elizabethan England,” she interjects, planting her hands on her hips.

“Well of course not, that’s on Earth, that’s boring, isn’t it? Plexoclas III then, that’s the place! They’ve got the biggest renaissance fair in the universe! Well not the universe, strictly speaking, but at the very least that galactic sector which is nothing to sniff at if you consider the–”

“Doctor!”

“–and they’ve got most massive turkey legs like you’ve never seen! Well not turkey, not what _you’d_ call turkey, but it passes for turkey–”

“ _Doctor, I don’t want to go to bloody Plexiglass III!_ ”

“Plexoclas III,” the Doctor correct reflexively and then _finally_ shuts up upon correctly interpreting the hand planted on her hip and her rapidly deepening glare. He opens his mouth, seems to consider a moment, and then closes it, looking a little frightened.

“Er – then why are you –”

“Why am I wearing this? _Excellent_ question!” she flings her hands up into the air, exasperated, and begins to pace back and forth, her gown rustling in her wake. “Because I thought it might be nice! Because you stayed for _two bloody weeks_ on that backwater planet while I did body peels and had massages and put god-knows-what on my face but it made my skin feel soft as a fetus–”

“Donna,” the Doctor croons. His voice is low and there’s an all-too-familiar sparkle in his eye.

“– so I figured you might _like_ it if I did this because you’ve only mentioned wenches about 14 times, but of course I’m an idiot because you’re not a regular man, you’re a bleedin’ _Martian_ and you were probably just interested in studying them or I dunno... cloning them, or something science-y... _”_

“Donna,” the Doctor says again, a little louder, and this time she can’t miss it. There’s a little smirk playing about his lips, and his expression is positively lascivious.

“You...you’re having me on,” she says suddenly, taken aback.

He grins. The great big idiot.

Her jaw drops and she’s about to smack him or yell at him or _something_ and then he sweeps forward and kisses her and all thoughts of violence skitter from her head.

“You look _divine_ ,” he murmurs, slipping an arm around her waist. “And this corset is just…” He lets out a breath, holds her at arm’s length and gives her the kind of slow look up and down that instantly reduces her innards to jelly though she’d never admit it to him. He delicately fingers the intricate lace at her bust, brushing the soft skin just above and her eyes close of their own accord.

“You’re an idiot,” she breathes, feeling light-headed and not just because of the corset. “And I can’t breath in this thing.”

“Better get you out of it then,” he says matter-of-factly.

Donna couldn’t agree more.

 


	12. Chapter 12

“Spaceman,” he states, apparently out of nowhere.

“You what?” she asks half-distracted, flipping through a Hello magazine from the year 2130. Just as she’d always suspected, Angelina Jolie is an alien.

“You call me Spaceman.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, so?”

He’s broken out into a grin, the same sort of shiny-faced exuberance he always radiates when he thinks she’s done something brilliant. She rolls her eyes.

“No one’s ever given me a proper nickname before,” he says warmly.

“Oh they must have.”

He cocks his head, considering. “Well… Destroyer of Worlds is not exactly a nickname, more of an epithet.”

Donna snorts and turns back to her magazine. “You are _so_ odd.”

She flips through a couple pages, learns that the trendy colour of autumn 2130 is botheliomide blue, whatever the hell that means, and then realises he’s still staring at her, grinning from ear to ear.

“ _What_?” she snaps.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. She huffs out a sigh. “Well it’s just… you meet a 900 year old alien –”

“Mate, I’ve been inside your head, I _know_ you’ve been knocking about at least a millennium,” Donna interjects.

The Doctor frowns, and gives her a dignified look. “– a 900 year old alien,” he continues, emphatically, “who has just destroyed an entire species and your first instinct is to…. Give me a nickname.”

She gives him a withering look that plainly says _get to the point, Martian_.

“I just think it’s… well… it’s really rather cute, I think–”

Donna wrinkles up her nose, her glare deepening. “ _Cute_?”

The Doctor backtracks quickly. “Not cute. Very… uh… dignified, serious, and grave process, nickname-ification.”

“Right,” she says. “That’s it.” She closes the magazine and tosses it on the jump seat with a dull slap. He looks a little frightened.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to think of a new nickname for you.”

“What?!”

“One that’s less _cute,_ ” she says. She pronounces the word ‘cute’ like some kind of slur.

She taps her finger on her chin, with an exaggerated pensive expression. “How about Space Idiot?”

The Doctor frowns.

“Or Martian Git?”

“I really don’t think it’s necessary to–”

“Oh I’ve got one! Time Wanker.”

“Well that’s just _childish_ ,” the Doctor mutters, sounding affronted. Donna laughs and he can only look offended for a little while longer before he gives into a chuckle. She grins at him.

“I like Spaceman,” he says, gently.

Her smile softens a bit. “I s’pose it does have a good ring to it,” she concedes, her gaze fond. His eyes radiate affection and she feels something very warm and comforting settling in her chest like a nice cup of tea. It’s always like that when she’s with him.

She allows herself another moment to feel sweetly sentimental and then jabs her index finger into his chest so he gives a little jump.

“Fine, Spaceman it is. But if you ever call me _cute_ again I’ll dream up something decidedly less flattering.”

“Duly noted,” the Doctor grins.


	13. Chapter 13

“What’ll we tell people?”

“Mmmm?” Donna murmurs, her breath fluttering against his chest. They’re in her room, in her bed, and Donna manages to ignore how surreal the whole situation is as long as she doesn’t think about it too hard.

Which is proving difficult, because this small more-than-mates adjustment in their friendship seems to provoke half a million questions from the heretofore emotionally stunted alien at her side. 

It’s the sort of emotional repression she’d rather prefer at the moment, if she’s honest. 

“Y’know… about us?”

She raises her head and gives him a sharp look. “Nothing, I should think.” 

“Oh. Yeah.” 

He goes back to his novel, brainy specs perched on the tip of his nose. She’s afforded a moment of peace. 

“But if people assume we’re not together–”

“–which we’re not–”

“I know, but they assume, don’t they, and they’re not as far off as they once were, and I’d hate to lie–”

“You lie all the time,” she points out.

“Yes, but not about important things.”

This earns him a very dubious look from beneath a raised eyebrow.

“We are not  _ together, _ ” she snaps, grumpily, after a moment. “Don’t make me change my mind about this whole thing.”

That shuts him up promptly. If sometimes inscrutable company, he certainly is eager and about as talented as he thinks he is.  A pleasant shiver works its way down her spine at the thought. 

“Cold?” he asks, smirking. She can’t hide a thing from him.

Donna glowers at him, and nestles deeper into the pillows, her curves complementing the concave lines of his body beneath the duvet. She’s not quite ready to admit it, even to herself, but they do seem to just fit together and as soon as she settles next to him, she falls into perfect comfort. She sighs, listens to his breathing and the occasional flick of a page and thinks how easy and dangerous it’d be to get used to this.

“I don’t want to leave the bubble,” she says, after a couple minutes of silence. He raises an eyebrow, thoughtfully dog-ears his page and sets it aside on the bed, looking at her expectantly. With his brainy specs dangling precariously off the end of his nose and his thoughtfully perturbed expression, he’d perfectly resemble a professor confronted with a perplexing new concept if it weren’t for his nudity.  It’s strange how they can be in such an unfamiliar situation and yet so easily default to their comfortable roles. 

She hesitates a moment, and when she continues it all comes out in a breathless rush. “You know… that bubble, the bubble you’re in - in a new relationship when you can’t keep your hands off each other and everything is new and exciting and you miss the person when they’re in the next room and if we tell everyone then they won’t understand because they couldn’t understand, could they? They can’t understand how it is with us, how we’re mates first and this… whatever  _ this  _ is second and then it’ll just be out in the world, like that, and it’ll be over and–  _ what are you looking at me like that for _ ?” 

Indeed, he’s grinning at her slyly, his eyes radiating warmth. 

“You said we’re in a relationship,” he teases.

“I did not,” she says flatly. 

“Did too.”

She rolls her eyes at him, exasperated and just the tiniest bit accusatory. “I’m trying to be honest with you.” 

He just beams at her and she turns over grumpily - “well if you’re going to be like that” - and adjusts her position so she can hear the comforting double-beat of his hearts under her ear. There’s another long moment of silence and Donna can just barely hear the hum of the TARDIS as if she’s trying to lower Donna's hackles and lull them to sleep. 

“You’re wrong though,” he states, matter-of-factly.  “We can’t leave the bubble.”

“Oh?”

“We can’t leave the bubble because we were never in the bubble.” 

“Oh, well  _ thanks _ ,” she says sarcastically. 

“No, I mean… all that stuff you said… that’s for people who don’t know each other that well. I reckon you and me… I reckon we’re in some sort of structure a bit more resilient than a bubble–” 

“Like a TARDIS?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, like a TARDIS. It can take a beating. We… y’know, we know each other. Warts and all. It’s harder to pop that.” He gives her a crooked smile. 

“You sayin’ I’ve got warts?” she shoots. 

“I’m saying I quite like your warts,” he says gently, freeing a hand from behind his head so he can rest it over where hers lays on his chest.

She laughs lightly. “Yours are okay too.” 

As far as the Doctor is concerned, it’s a ringing endorsement. 


End file.
